Demolition of Comanche Hill and Campus Colony Apartments underway

The Comanche Hill apartments on Woods Street and the Campus Colony apartments on Comanche Street are undergoing demolition this summer. One of the buildings in the Comanche Hill complex has already been completely demolished into “a big pile of rubble, and they’re going to start hauling off all the debris,” said Juan Guerra, associate vice president of Facilities.

“And the rest of them, both at Comanche Hill and Colony, are scheduled to come down over the next couple of weeks,” Guerra said.

Around 9 a.m. on Monday the apartment buildings began to come down, Guerra said.

“It doesn’t take much to take these buildings down,” he said.

The entire demolition process of scheduled to take six weeks and will include clearing the demolition, putting up erosion control measures and security lighting, Guerra said. The goal is to have demolition completed and cleared by the start of the fall semester.

Part of the apartments’ existing parking lots will be reopened for students to utilize during the fall semester, he said.

“The parking that used to be there for the apartments – we’re not gonna tear up all the asphalt, we’re going to leave it there so that it’ll continue to be available for parking but I’m not sure what kind of permit you need,” Guerra said.

No traffic will be affected by the demolition of the apartment complexes, Guerra said. There are no street closures planned for this project.

“What we’re doing is we’re clearing the site, getting it ready for the future engineering and science complex,” Guerra said. “Hopefully we’ll have that funded next year when the legislators are back in session”

Administrators identified the Comanche Hill and Campus Colony properties as the future site of a new engineering building and hope to begin planning once legislators approve funding for a Tuition Revenue Bond, according to a Feb. 27 University Star article. Costly apartment renovation estimates and a need for additional classroom and lab space led officials to decide to demolish the complexes, according the article.

“In the meantime, what we’re doing is we’re just clearing the site and started to leave it prepped and ready for construction,” Guerra said.